The Relationship, Though Distant, Between The Macrauchenia
And The Guanaco, Between The Toxodon And The
Capybara, - The Closer Relationship Between
The many extinct
Edentata and the living sloths, ant-eaters, and armadillos,
now so eminently characteristic of South American zoology,
- And the still closer relationship between the fossil and
living species of Ctenomys and Hydrochaerus, are most
interesting facts. This relationship is shown wonderfully - as
wonderfully as between the fossil and extinct Marsupial
animals of Australia - by the great collection lately brought
to Europe from the caves of Brazil by MM. Lund and Clausen.
In this collection there are extinct species of all the
thirty-two genera, excepting four, of the terrestrial quadrupeds
now inhabiting the provinces in which the caves occur;
and the extinct species are much more numerous than those
now living: there are fossil ant-eaters, armadillos, tapirs,
peccaries, guanacos, opossums, and numerous South American
gnawers and monkeys, and other animals. This wonderful
relationship in the same continent between the dead and
the living, will, I do not doubt, hereafter throw more light
on the appearance of organic beings on our earth, and their
disappearance from it, than any other class of facts.
It is impossible to reflect on the changed state of the
American continent without the deepest astonishment. Formerly
it must have swarmed with great monsters: now we
find mere pigmies, compared with the antecedent, allied
races. If Buffon had known of the gigantic sloth and
armadillo-like animals, and of the lost Pachydermata, he might
have said with a greater semblance of truth that the creative
force in America had lost its power, rather than that it had
never possessed great vigour.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 266 of 776
Words from 71028 to 71305
of 208183
